


all that laughter crumbling through your fingers

by philthestone



Series: destrozada, just a little bit [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fake Character Death, Gen, Panic Attacks, im so sorry, ive turned "inflicting emotional suffering on jacob peralta" into a marketable skill, really terrible horrible MISERABLe angst, you know: The Gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 07:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5576038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy kind-of sort-of dies, and everything falls apart.</p><p>Rosa observes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all that laughter crumbling through your fingers

**Author's Note:**

> heeeeeeey *finger guns*
> 
> so, takes place at some point after defence rests but before the boyle-linetti wedding
> 
> blanket apology pleasedontkillmeokaybye

Rosa, her fingers wound tightly around the back of the plastic chairs in the meeting room and her voice short and brooking no argument, actually opposes the whole idea at first. 

So does Captain Holt, even if he maybe isn’t as vocal about his objections as Rosa is.

“What?” she snaps, the first time it’s brought up. “That’s insane.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she growls, the second time it’s suggested. “We’ll figure out another way.”

The third time, she doesn’t even bother with pleasantries.

_“No.”_

She stands with her hands curled up tightly at her sides, the outsides of her knuckles brushing against the hems of her jacket sleeves, not completely sure why she’s so angry that they’re even _considering_ this and watching as Amy talks in that eager, animated way of hers, explaining to Captain Holt why there is _literally no other way_ they can pull the sting off.

On the one hand, Rosa gets it; Amy doesn’t want to sacrifice a month’s worth of undercover work and intel. Work and intel for Rosa’s case, the one the higher ups got tangled up with because it bled into larger investigations and for Christ’s sake, _Rosa_ was the one who suggested Amy for the job.

On the other hand –

Rosa watches as Holt agrees with her; slowly, finally, convinced by Amy’s determined stubbornness and the FBI agents’ voices of reason. Rosa watches, hands still curled at her sides and the tightness of her chest threatening to spill through into her voice, because this can’t – she _won’t_ –

“Diaz?” Captain Holt’s voice is calm – not quite _gentle_ , she thinks, and realizes that he knows if he tried gentle with her right now she’d get angry, the tightness not just spilling through but exploding, blazing. (He’s not wrong.) “It’s your call.”

Rosa swallows and pretends her voice isn’t getting caught in her throat. “Fine. Whatever.”

There are nods, and relieved murmurs, and Captain Holt reaches over to clear up his papers from the desk and Amy laughs – a high, nervous sound that Rosa would usually pick up on immediately and interrogate her about. But it’s quickly followed by a strained, “Don’t be so worried, Diaz,” that, later, Rosa thinks was probably more to reassure herself than it was for Rosa’s benefit. In that moment, though, she hasn’t thought about it enough to stop her fist from slamming down on the table, and she doesn’t spare a glance or thought for anyone else when they all jump – her blazing eyes directed at Amy and Amy only. There’s a split second, barely half a beat, where Rosa thinks that this is her _friend_ , that Amy’s her _friend_ , and that the last thing she wants to experience is a world where, even just play pretend, Amy’s not there.

(Then the split second’s over, and Rosa’s still thinking that Amy’s her friend, but Rosa’s also no longer thinking about herself.)

“Think about it, Santiago! _Everyone’s_ gonna think you’re _dead_.”

Rosa watches Amy stare at her, watches the last vestiges of the mask of enthusiasm she’d slipped into earlier – her go-getter, case-solving competitive streak that had pushed them through the hellish afternoon meeting – crumble away, ever so slightly, as the reality of it finally settles in the younger woman’s stomach. 

_Everyone –_

“I know,” she finally whispers, and Rosa thinks she sees something fracture in Amy’s big dark eyes. “But it’s the best shot we’ve got.”

**

Rosa doesn’t like to think of the days following the announcement. She doesn’t like to think of the blown up car, or the funeral, or the way Charles started crying.

She doesn’t like to think of the rasp of Captain Holt’s voice, catching in his throat when he asks her to clear Amy’s desk out, or the way Jake shows up at her apartment two nights after the fact, dressed in nothing but pajama pants and an old tattered hoodie, standing in the bitter December air and looking like he has no idea how he got there.

She doesn’t like to think about it, so she doesn’t, and pretends that everything’s normal. It’s not like Jake’s never slept on her couch before, even if this is the first time she can add the words “for two consecutive weeks” to the end of that statement.

She doesn’t like to think about it.

(It’s hard not to, though. It’s _really_ hard not to.)

**

It’s weird because Amy had already been mostly absent from the precinct for about a month before the op went south. She’d shown up some days, sure, but it had been – _less_. Not as structured. Fragmented, like an afterthought, because of course, her work on the op was taking priority over other casework.

Rosa tells herself, as she methodically makes herself a cup of coffee in the break room, that she has no reason to be this angry. That she is, in fact, hugely grateful for Amy’s help. That in a little while, they’ll have made the arrests, rounded up the prostitution ring, and Amy will be sitting back in her chair and sorting through her stupid colour coded manila binders and organizing her even stupider highlighters, and Rosa won’t feel like she has a stack of bricks sitting on her chest.

Rosa tells herself, fumbling with the coffee grinder and glaring at the lone beans that spill on the floor, that she also hates the silence.

It’s weird as hell, because it’s not even like Amy was a particularly loud person. ( _Is_ , reminds a voice in her head. Amy _is_.) She bustles, sure, and makes dumb doe-eyes at the Captain and her voice can come out in over-loud pitches sometimes that make Rosa sort of want to stick someone’s head in a paper shredder, and once or twice she’s actually _hummed._

But.

It takes Rosa a week to realize that it’s not Amy’s loudness that has left the precinct, but Jake’s.

It takes Rosa five minutes to make her way to the bathroom, take a deep breath and slam her fist into the tiled blue wall of the ladies’ bathroom; the bruises on her knuckles throb painfully for the whole rest of the day, but she glares at Terry when he asks, refuses Charles’s suggestion that he fetch her an icepack from the fridge. Instead, she clenches and unclenches her hand, tries not to gag on her coffee and hates the quiet that fills the space around them. Jake hasn’t looked up from his desk since he arrived in the morning, and even though she’s caught him staring blankly at the desk ( _her desk)_ a few times, he hasn’t spoken a word.

It’s infuriating.

Rosa dumps her coffee in the sink and grabs her stack of files, and when Terry comes down later to fetch an old casefile from the lockup, he finds her sitting with her back against one of the shelves and her work spread out around her on the floor.

“It’s so quiet up there,” she says, when he freezes at the sight of her, large hands hovering in front of him like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch her or not. Rosa hates the way her voice comes out hoarser than usual. “It’s so goddamn quiet and I want to kill something.”

“I know,” says Terry, and she thinks that he would have stayed and sat with her, or something equally stupid (but equally appreciated) if his breathing hadn’t turned shaky and his big, rumbling voice fracturing. “I know, Rosa.”

**

“He’s not going to the therapy sessions,” Gina says one night, stirring at her offensively bright drink and then sticking the straw in her mouth. She sucks at it, once, twice, lipstick smearing along the edge, and Rosa pretends that she doesn’t see the bruises under Gina’s made-up eyes.

“Have you?” Rosa asks bluntly, looking down to glare at the counter. They’re _out_ , as if that’s a normal occurrence _(it used to be)_ , as if they don’t care about the space between them that used to be filled by nervous giggles when Gina suggested possible guys to corner on the other side of the bar – that used to dare Rosa to drinking competitions and lost spectacularly but manage to stay standing on her single pair of stilettos for far longer than Rosa ever expected.

“Have _you?_ ” Gina fires back, not bothering to look Rosa in the eye. Rosa grips her fingers more tightly around her shot glass and tries not to growl at the chipped wooden counter.

“Once. Maybe. No.”

“Mmmhmm,” agrees Gina, sipping her drink. She tosses her reddish hair behind her shoulder and slouches against the counter. “This sucks. More than I thought.”

Rosa stares at the bar. It’s greasy and there’s a ring of liquid seeping around the edge of the bottom of her glass, rippling against the dark surface.

“You thought about this happening? Christ, Linetti.”

Gina turns to look at her this time, greenblue eyes flashing, and Rosa has to swallow, hard. The alcohol is sitting badly in her stomach, which is a first, and she thinks that maybe this wasn’t a smart plan; the gap between them keeps getting emptier as the minutes tick by, sticky and heavy and smelling like Gina’s sugary cocktail.

“He’s not going to the therapy sessions,” Gina repeats after a beat of holding Rosa’s eyes (which could translate to anything from _he’s not talking to me at all and I’m actually worried_ to _he’s talking to me instead of going to the departmentally-mandated shrink and everything’s shit_ ), and then downs the rest of her drink in one go. “Screw this.”

Rosa’s slump matches Gina’s against the counter. “Yeah,” she mutters, and hates that she can’t look people in the eye anymore without feeling her gut lurch. “Yeah.”

**

Sometimes when Rosa’s lying in bed at night alone, she wonders what Amy’s up to. If she’s in a safe house somewhere, pretending that she’s totally not going stir crazy but itching to be back in the field. She wonders if Amy’s got a good filing system in the safe house, or if they let her take the black market Japanese gel pens Jake once bought as a White Flag early on in their partnership with her to make extensive to-do lists for when she comes back. She’ll probably have perfected her Five Year Plan into a Ten Year Plan by the end of this, Rosa thinks, she’s gonna have so much time on her hands. Maybe she’s learning how to paint her nails properly (Jake’s never bothered to teach her; Gina refuses to teach her) or brushing up on her eyeshadow game (Jake _tried_ to teach her, once; Gina’s third-most sort-of-prized eyeliner pencil was generously donated) or finally finishing Downton Abbey.

Rosa thinks, with a grimace, that she’s probably taken a whole suitcase full of books with her and is spending most of her time curled up on the couch reading.

Hypothetically, it sounds boring as hell.

(The most vindictive, selfish part of Rosa hopes that it is.)

Once, when they were particularly drunk, when everything felt a little scattered and Rosa was camped out on Santiago’s couch and they were marathoning Disney movies and passing back and forth a bottle of tequila and Rosa was pretending that Amy _wasn’t_ pretending that neither of them was worried about how the mobster life was treating Jake –

 _Once_ , Amy had said,

“I wonder where people _go_.”

Rosa had looked at her like she was crazy. She had looked back, chin tilted up in a way that suggested she was definitely at least one third of the way up the Santiago Drunkenness Scale, and her eyes were challenging.

“When they die,” Rosa had translated. “Screw off, Santiago. He’s not gonna die.”

Amy’s eyes had flicked down to the coffee table, back up to where the end credits of _Ratatouille_ were still rolling, the blueish TV light flickering over them.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Rosa bit down on her bottom lip and swirled the remaining liquid in the bottle she’d been holding, took a deep breath and leaned back against the armrest.

“Dunno. They’re just gone I guess.”

“No,” Amy had insisted, shaking her head a little too emphatically and lifting her chin again. “They’ve gotta go – _go_ somewhere. Like, all of them – all of their _thing_. It’s gotta go _somewhere,_ Rosa.”

Rosa swallowed another mouthful of liquor and kicked her feet into Amy’s lap.

“Yeah, sure.”

Amy had grinned, nodded like she’d just figured something out; triumphant and drunk, exhausted after the emotional toll of the day’s events. Rosa remembers the smile stuttering, though, slipping off of her face after the moment a triumph, and the memory makes her frown at the ceiling above her own bed, now.

She wonders where _Amy’s_ gone. She’s not dead, clearly, but she’s not _here_ , either, and the words are coming back now, poking and prodding at the back of Rosa’s mind, crawling back up to the surface every time she catches Charles fumble in his swallowed back “hello” when he passes the now-empty desk – every time she sees Jake lift his head up from his work, eyes almost-alight, only for the illusion of reality that’s hanging over all of their heads to knock the breath out of his chest again.

Rosa wonders if there’s any good tequila in whatever safehouse Amy’s holed up in and hopes that Santiago has enough decency to drink a shot on Rosa’s behalf, at least once, because she owes her, damn it.

**

A month down the line, Holt gives Jake another week off. He refuses to take no for an answer, and asks Terry, clearly and succinctly, to make sure Jake gets home alright. 

Jake doesn’t try to argue, which is what Rosa knows wrenches at the Captain’s gut the most. He’s pale and quiet, his voice sounding funny, like he’s recovering from a bad bout of laryngitis, and there’s a bruised redness around his eyes that makes him look permanently hungover. He’s stopped sleeping on her couch by this point, and Rosa wonders if he’s sleeping at all now that she’s not there on the ground beside him, making sure that he’s not left alone inside his head.

(It’s the least she could do; the ground wasn’t all that uncomfortable, anyway, and sometimes she’d grab onto the hand dangling from the edge of the couch and pretend she was somehow fixing this huge mess that she’d helped create with her biting, _Fine, whatever_.

It’s easy to pretend.)

He stumbles into work after only three days, ignores Rosa’s sharp, “Jake, you’re not supposed to be here,” and starts blindly ruffling through case files.

Case file after case file after case file, all of them cold cases that he’s dregged up from the very depths of the evidence lockup, looking for _something_.

By the end of the day, his hands are shaking uncontrollably and he can’t focus his eyes properly.

“I’m taking you home,” says Rosa, pretending that her heart isn’t breaking just a little, pretending that she doesn’t hate the op handlers for suggesting the fake-death thing to Amy in the first place, pretending that she didn’t see the flash of realization and regret and pain on Amy’s face before she said, _it’s the only way._ The tightness in her chest hasn’t left yet, still twisting every ten minutes like clockwork since it made itself at home that day in Captain Holt’s office. “C’mon, Jake.” Softly, this time, with a gentle hand on his arm. “You need to sleep.”

“’M already asleep,” he mumbles.

Rosa feels her back stiffen. 

“Yeah,” she says. “You look half-dead.”

“No. No, this is - it’s a dream. It’s a dream and I’m going to wake up.”

His eyes are on the table in front of him, unfocused, like he’s looking at something else. His fingers are gripping the edge of the desk.

“Jake, it’s not a dream.”

“I’m just - if I - if I focus, or something, if I focus myself enough? I-If I just ignore it, it’s gonna end sometime, I’m just gonna wake up, or my - my alarm’ll go off cause it’s just a dream -”

He’s breathing normally, so she doesn’t tighten her hand on his arm – but his voice has sped up, the words stumbling over each other the way she knows they do when he’s distressed.

 _Distressed_. What a great goddamn word.

“Jake -”

“It’s just a dream, it’s not real - it’s not real, it’s _not_.” He turns and looks up at her, so abrupt and sudden, too-large brown eyes looking like they’re only just seeing her standing there. Rosa wishes she could will the universe to move time faster so that Amy could un-die, could be back there sitting across from him and scolding him for not eating anything for seventy two hours straight. Wishes that she, Rosa, wasn’t standing there to hear Jake’s next words. 

“She can’t be gone,” he whispers, and Rosa thinks, with a twist in her stomach, that she’s never seen Jake look quite so young. “She was sitting right there laughing just yesterday, I –”

He frowns and turns back to his case file, fingers letting go of the desk, but now his whole arm is shaking and Rosa grabs it, to steady him.

 _(Him,_ she tells herself. She’s steadying _him._ )

She stumbles into the breakroom and collapses onto a chair, ignores Charles’s look of concern, both at her and through the door to the bullpen, and asks Terry and Gina to take him home. To take him home _for_ her, in her place, because she can’t bare seeing him like that and she’s disgustingly selfish, she knows, but she’s always goddamn hated feelings and this whole shitstorm is making her want to cry, because one of her best friends looks like his whole world has been destroyed and that kind of poetic shit is only poetic when it happens in movies.

In real life, it feels like someone’s smothering them all with a mouldy pillow.

Rosa sits with her head in her hands against the breakroom table for what feels like an hour, long enough for Gina to coax Jake out of his chair, for Terry to pick him up and place him on his feet and walk him to the car without her having to watch.

It’s only when a hand rests on her shoulder that Rosa starts upright, hands flying down from her face and breath being sucked in with so much force that she feels it tear at her throat.

“Rosa,” he says, his voice quiet.

“I need to finish my report,” she says, doesn’t bother to keep the bite out of her voice. “The Ritowski case is almost done, sir.”

Holt’s hand leaves her shoulder. “Very well, detective. Tell me if you need any extra resources.”

She nods.

**

She walks into Captain Holt’s office the next morning, ignoring Charles’s watery greeting and slamming the door shut behind her.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she snaps. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair, sir, and you know it. We have to tell them.”

“Detective Diaz –”

“You told us about Jake,” she says, raising a finger at him and, just barely, raising her voice. “You told us about Jake and that was way less of big deal than this, he only got fucking _fired,_ this is –”

“Rosa,” says Captain Holt, his palms flat on the desk. “Please –”

 _“Look at him!”_ she says, thrusting a hand towards the bullpen, to where Jake is sitting back at his desk, fumbling through another stack of old cases. Her voice is cracking for the first time since the big, official funeral, with the salute and the medal of valor and Charles and Gina and Amy’s parents crying (even though they knew - her parents _knew_ , but they were still crying, because who doesn’t cry, thinks Rosa, at the goddamn funeral of your own goddamn child) and Terry looking stiff and pale and smaller than she’d ever seen him before and _Jake_ –

Jake, with his fingers digging into the thighs of his pants and his eyes blank and his face pale and looking at the casket like he was in physical pain.

It was shit, and every time Rosa looked across at Captain Holt, she knew he knew it was shit, too.

“They’re keeping a very tight hold,” says Holt, watching her take two deep breaths and drop her hand, the other coming up to press its heel against her eyes; Rosa isn’t sure whether or not she’s grateful that he doesn’t comment on her outburst. “On all communication and information. I don’t even know where Amy is right now, other than in a secure location.” He takes a deep breath, and by the way his eyes flick out the window to the bullpen, she knows what he’s thinking of. “I wish I could change this situation. Rosa, you must know that I would do anything in my power.”

She slumps down into the seat opposite to him. Her legs feel tired, suddenly – like someone’s knocked the air out of her whole body. 

“Charles can’t stop crying,” she says into the polished wood of the desk. “He’s stopped trying to hide it now. I caught Gina in the toilet once, too.”

Captain Holt looks more defeated than she’s ever seen him as he uses his fingers to straighten a document sitting on the desk.

“Jake’s not doing well,” he says after a moment, and it’s a statement, hollow and guilt-laden.

“No,” says Rosa. The word is like a bullet off her tongue.

“That was –” A pause. “Expected.”

She’s still nodding when she pushes out of her chair and leaves the office, making a beeline to the bathroom and pressing her cheek against the cool metal of the bathroom stall, knees pulled up against her chest. Three deep breaths, and she’ll go back and start working again.

(It _was_ expected, and maybe that’s why Rosa feels like an accomplice in a crime.)

**

What isn’t expected, though, is that Jake comes into the precinct again, the next day, and the next, and the next, and instead of the haze she’s gotten used to seeing him in there’s a manic sort of energy that’s seeped into his bones, his fingers flying through the old folders and documented files with an intensity that is shocking even for him. He’s focused in a distracted, haphazard way that sets Rosa’s teeth on edge, muttering to himself and dropping his pen five times within one minute and –

Not smiling. He’s moving again, bouncing and tripping back and forth between rooms, ploughing through cases (and she can’t help but wonder what he’s looking for, because surely the everyday cases he’s working don’t require pulling up old files from years before and then discarding them five minutes later in a pile at the side of the desk –) but she realizes two weeks in that even more than the silence-filled void that existed before, there’s another empty space in front of her where Jake’s too-big smile would fill everything up before, and everything seems exponentially more off now that some version of Jake is, for all intents and purposes, back.

Captain Holt’s stopped trying to send him home and has instead banned him from field work; Rosa, hesitating outside of Holt’s door on her way to Terry’s desk, overhears the interaction and is prepared for the protests, for the loud argument, for the declarations of injustice that have inevitably followed any attempt to chain Jake Peralta to his desk in the past.

Jake only nods, shrugs and cracks a lopsided grimace that couldn’t even pass for a grin if she was being generous, and runs a hand through his unkempt hair.

“Probably for the best,” he mumbles, staring at his shoes. “I’m kind of a mess anyway.”

“Jake,” comes Captain Holt’s voice, so soft that Rosa almost misses it.

“I’ll get you the paperwork on the Fieldman case by tonight, Captain,” Jake mutters, and he’s out the door, brushing past Rosa. His fingers press against the crook of her arm fleetingly, so small and fast that Rosa wouldn’t have caught it had she not known him for so many years – had she not caught the tiny, sharp inhale through his nose, the crease of his eyebrows as his foot stutters against the tiled floor as he passes her.

She remembers when they were a month into the Academy and she’d been surprised by how tactile a person Jake was, how ready he always was to give hugs and sling arms around shoulders and bump elbows. He didn’t do it to her, not at first, always gave her enough of a warning to stiffen or express discomfort. But then, she’d slid into his booth at the bar, once, leaned in close enough to press her shoulder against his, and she'd _known_ that he’d known; they were friends.

She thinks that the last time she touched him was squeezing his hand where it dangled off the edge of the couch, reassuring him that she was there, and she reaches her hand up to grip his shoulder. But he’s started walking again before she can.

**

Captain Holt, Rosa thinks, is trying to do his best to fix things. It’s not like he can do much, and his face remains impassive, his voice steady; but Rosa hears him reject any suggestions at letting a new detective transfer to the precinct and she knows.

The problem, Rosa thinks, is that the suggestion is made _in_ the bullpen, as a captain from another precinct – the seventy-eight? The ninety-second? Hell if Rosa knows – leaves his office. Good natured, maybe, and a completely valid idea.

(But.)

“I’ve got a detective you might want to consider for the opening, Raymond,” is heard, the woman pausing just outside the office door and turning to Captain Holt. (Her voice is gentle, sympathetic - but honestly, Rosa thinks, that’s just not good enough.) “They’d be a good fit.”

Rosa isn’t sure if Holt’s voice really is that loud, or if it just sounds that way because everyone else has fallen silent. Charles and Gina are both looking at Jake; Terry, hovering by the edge of Gina’s desk, is glancing between Holt and the other captain, his eyebrows creased and the corners of his mouth pinched. Hitchcock and Scully are looking at each other, their eyes wide.

Jake’s frozen, his eyes on his computer, but she can see the tightness of his breathing under the rumpled plaid of his dress shirt.

“Thank you, Celeste,” says Captain Holt, and Rosa thinks that most people wouldn’t notice the shortness in his tone. “But I think that we’re managing for now.”

Rosa also isn’t sure who leaves the bullpen first; the Celeste woman or Jake, who pushes himself up from his desk with a sharp breath, his lips pressed together and his fingers curled so tightly around the pen in his hand that a part of Rosa’s brain worries for a moment that they’ll go blue, that the circulation will cut off and then they’ll be useless fingers and fall off and that’d be –

He’s gone, he’s not at his desk anymore, and suddenly, Rosa realizes, neither is Gina.

Charles catches her eye from across the desk and against all expectation, Rosa feels her jaw tremble.

 _Shit_.

She’s stepped out into the hallway and is rushing to the bathroom, taking deep breaths, not really knowing where she’s going but knowing that she has to get out of the stifling atmosphere of the bullpen, has to figure out a way to tell Jake about everything without revealing how _grossly_ she’s betrayed his trust, but maybe she deserves that, maybe she deserves the hurt look he’ll give her and the continued lack of all those dumb little _Jake_ gestures in her life because she’s a horrible person and –

She stops, jerks to a halt in the middle of the hall. Gina’s voice is coming from somewhere to her right, muffled; there’s a door, she realizes. A door to a janitor’s supply closet.

Rosa pushes against it.

Gina’s on the floor with her hands planted firmly on Jake’s thighs and she’s looking straight at him, speaking clearly and directly, a strain of anxiety Rosa’s never heard before twisting the bottoms of her words.

Jake’s hyperventilating.

“– Listen to me, Jake, _Jake_ , he’s not giving you a new part – Jake! Jake, come on, babe, you can do this, you can be okay –”

Rosa’s brain vaguely registers the harsh smell of chemical disinfectant in the air alongside the panicked look in Jake’s brown eyes, the way he’s shaking his head.

“They don’t – Gina –” His words are slipping out between gasps, neck rigid, skin pale. “She’s not – she’s _not_ , she –”

“I know, I _know_ , but you need to start counting in your head, Jake, you need to breathe – see, one –” Gina mimics an inhale, her whole chest expanding she does it with so much force; Jake’s breaths are still coming out in short bursts, rasping against his throat. Gina exhales and Rosa catches the way her fingers dig a little more tightly into Jake’s legs. “Two – you’ve gotta do it with me, kiddo, come on –”

“Can’t – she –” He’s shaking his head, hands curled up into fists at his sides, almost grabbing onto the fabric of his jeans under his legs. Gina’s forced his legs down from where they were pressed against his chest, and now Rosa can see that his whole body is shaking. “I – I don’t –”

“It’s fine,” Gina’s saying. “Shhh, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s not your fault. Deep breaths, Jake, deep breaths. I’ll do it with you, okay?”

He nods finally, his eyes scrunching shut, and Gina takes a deep breath again. Jake mimics her, once, twice, three times, and then they’re in synch, and Jake’s eyes are fluttering open again, and Gina’s nodding encouragingly, her voice low and crooning and gentle.

The vacuum around them unconstricts; Rosa can think again. Her whole body has been frozen in its spot this whole time, something she’s only just realizing.

“There we go,” Gina’s saying. “There we go, you’re okay, girl, you’re good, just keep at it. I know it’s hard.”

Jake’s next breath comes out shaky and stuttering, and Rosa sees his hands uncurl and come up to press against his mouth, so sudden and _involuntary_ that Rosa almost jerks forward, almost reaches out towards him. His face is crumpling, his whole _body_ is crumpling, hands covering his mouth and most of his cheeks and head dropping forward and shoulders slumping inward. There’s a moment, a heartbeat, where the only sound in the cramped, bleach-smelling janitor’s closet are the soft, muffled sobs, caught behind Jake’s fingers.

And then Gina says, “Oh, _Jake_ ,” in a too-quiet, not-Gina voice and wraps her arms behind him, pressing his head to her shoulder in an embrace. “Shhhh, shhhhh.”

Her eyes meet Rosa’s, wet and lined with red over the peeling yellow-plastic mop bucket that is lying upturned between them, and Rosa, watching as Gina rocks back and forth on her knees, feels her jaw tremble for the second time that day.

(She’s not sure how Captain Holt finds out, but he orders Jake home within the same afternoon.

“And –” There’s a pause to his speech, the stern, clipped lecture that was delivered behind the closed door of Holt’s office and she can only guess exactly what was said, but the door’s been opened and there’s a pause – “I know that it feels like the last thing you want to do, but I’m requiring you to attend the departmentally-mandated therapy sessions when you come back, Detective. Or I’ll have no choice other than to suspend you.”

Jake doesn’t say anything, and Holt’s eyes soften. His eyebrows are creased, furrowed against his brow, and Rosa can see his fingers clench at his sides.

( _Guilt_ , Rosa thinks.)

“Jacob,” he says, voice impossibly gentle. “I’m sorry.”

Jake frowns at the floor, keeps frowning as he picks up his jacket and badge from his desk and slings his bag over his shoulder. His cheeks are still blotchy and his lips are red and he doesn’t meet anyone’s eye on his way out, still frowning at the scuffed tiles of the bullpen floor, leading the way out into the hallway.

Rosa doesn’t catch the files sticking out of the worn leather of his bag; she’s staring at her desk, trying to pretend that she doesn’t feel nauseas, and even if she did, she’s not sure what she would have said.)

**

He’s back two days later, the bruises under his eyes more prevalent than ever, but with an added muss to the top of his curly hair and a crazed look in his eye that Rosa’s come to associate over the years with solving extra-hard cases. He dumps his bag at his desk, tugs two files out of the top drawer, and throws himself down in Amy’s seat, intent on the computer.

“Jake,” says Terry, hesitant, from across the bullpen. “Have you … eaten anything since Tuesday?”

“Bagel,” says Jake distractedly. “And I found a bottle of whiskey in my pantry, which was weird.”

He slams down his hand on the table, making them all jump, and swivels around in the chair, his eyes lit up with triumph. “I _knew_ it!”

“Knew what,” says Rosa, staring at him.

Jake stands up from the chair too quickly and seems to lose his balance, swaying slightly on the spot and clutching at the edge of the desk for support before raising a hand and pointing it at Rosa. 

“She’s not dead.”

There’s a beat of silence, so heavy and thick that it seems to _vibrate_ in the bullpen air, twanging and hovering between them all, suspended above the ground.

Rosa stares at him.

Terry stares at him.

Charles, who has just emerged from the break room clutching a muffin, stares at him. 

Gina looks up from her phone.

“Peralta,” comes Captain Holt’s voice, sharp and loud. “I thought I told you to go home. What are you doing back in the precinct.”

Jake swivels around and faces him, still clutching at the desk in support. “She’s – she’s not, I knew it, she’s not _dead_ , Captain, you – some – she’s not dead.” He takes a deep breath, stuttering breath and stands a little taller. And, absurdly, Rosa feels the beginnings of a smile grow behind her lips – feels the corners of her lips twitch eve as her stomach drops out. 

“Amy’s not dead.” (Repeated, as though to convince himself.) “AMY’S NOT DEAD!”

Holt’s widened eyes are the only thing about his body that moves. “Jake, how could you possibly –”

“I’m a fucking detective, sir,” says Jake, and he blacks out. 

Probably from hypoglycemic shock, thinks Rosa, even as she shouts and runs forward, her knee knocking painfully against the edge of Charles’s chair to catch him before something dumb happens, like him hitting his head on the metal edge of table as he goes down. But somehow despite it all her mouth has betrayed her and she’s _smiling_ , she can’t _stop_ smiling, her lips stretching and curling and her mouth opening and the bark of laughter ejecting itself from her chest with force, shocked and hysteric. She stumbles as she catches Jake and slips her arms under his armpits to hoist him to his feet and Terry (still pale) carries him to the break room and Charles starts crying again and Gina starts yelling for the police (“We _are_ the police!”) and Captain Holt turns back into his office, grabs his phone and makes a phone call.

Rosa doesn’t care about that, though; she’s grabbing Jake’s hand (she never does that) and she’s swallowing back against a lump in her throat (she never does that, either) and somewhere between Terry lifting Jake’s legs up so the blood’ll rush back to his brain and Scully and Hitchcock unearthing their entire stash of juice boxes in a frenzy, Jake’s eyes flutter open again and Rosa’s still holding his hand.

He blinks a couple times, disoriented.

“Rosa?” he whispers.

She nods, and her other hand has come up to grip his bicep. She’s sitting beside him on the couch, clinging to him, her words catching in her throat when she speaks next; her voice as much a whisper as his was.

(She’s not laughing or smiling anymore.)

“I’m sorry,” she says. She can feel her hands trembling and hates it, digs her fingers into his shoulders more tightly to stop it. “I’m so _sorry_ , Jake.”

His mouth turns up a little at the corner, eyes still fluttering. “’S okay, Diaz.”

She nods, and doesn’t let go of his hand until Terry lifts her from behind, bodily, and places her on the break room table beside Gina and the juice box mound so he can hand Jake the little carton of apple juice and scold him for bypassing any notion of junk food and not eating _anything_ for almost three days straight.

**

Holt tells the squad the next day, and Rosa’s hand is gripping Jake’s bicep the whole time. His frame is stiff and brittle and the total opposite of the softness that she’s so familiar with, and Rosa feels the pit of her stomach burn.

He doesn’t look at her the entire time, but she doesn’t let go of his arm, either.

The apology is faltered and breaking but the most sincere she’s ever seen Captain Holt. Rosa closes her eyes and tries not to inhale sharply when he doesn’t mention her involvement.

“There was no other choice,” he says, “and for that I am sorry. She’ll be coming back when the coast is clear – when it’s safe.”

He’s looking at Jake, but Jake is looking at the floor again, and Rosa is the one who has to watch Charles’s strangled laughter, Gina’s widened eyes and the way Terry’s shoulders sag, with relief or confusion Rosa’s not quite sure. Hitchcock says, “Well, we knew all along,” but Rosa can see the tears in his and Scully’s eyes, too.

She hates it. She hates the thick, suffocating feeling of emotion in the room – of _broken_ emotion, like someone came in and hacked them all to pieces with a blunt machete and left the remains in a pile. And Amy didn’t even _actually_ die.

_Jesus._

She lets go of Jake’s arm, then, and tries not to let it bother her too much when he doesn’t talk to her at all for the next week and a half.

She knows he still isn’t sleeping well and makes it a point to bring him coffee in the mornings: the fancy kind, a different flavor each morning. Sometimes she asks for extra whip, other times for those neat little chocolate shavings that melt in your drink. Terry raises his eyebrows at her after the third day, but Rosa doesn’t care.

It sure as hell isn’t anywhere close to an apology, but then Jake doesn’t even know that Rosa has anything to apologize for in the first place.

Or, well, he shouldn’t. Rosa thinks that even when dealing with shitstorms such as this, she has some semblance of a poker face.

**

He shows up at her door again, at three forty-two in the afternoon on a Sunday, and for some bullshit nonsense reason Rosa’s throat constricts.

Jake’s wearing his jacket this time, semi-bundled against the damp, clinging April air. His hair is still mussed, curling around his ears where it’s gotten too long, but some of the bruising around his eyes has lessened, and this time, he looks like he at least _sort of_ knows how he got there, to the doorstep of her apartment.

He looks at her for a long moment, and Rosa looks back, not noticing the goosebumps on her bare arms.

“Hi,” whispers Jake finally, and Rosa says, “I have _Finding Nemo_ on VHS,” and Jake stumbles in through the door.

“I knew that,” he tells her, and she nods, goes to clear up her bowl of cereal from the scratched coffee table as Jake makes his way to the couch, hovering for a moment before he sinks down onto the plush cushions.

“Your couch is really comfortable,” he says. “Have I ever told you that? It’s like, it’s crazy, how comfortable it is, I didn’t know they made couches like this, and you – you should’ve, like, told me, that you got a new couch. Rosa. I could’ve helped you move it in.”

Rosa sits down on the other end of the couch and tries not to fist her hands against her worn out sweatpants.

“I got the couch six months ago,” she says. “Terry helped me.”

“Okay,” says Jake. His voice is back to a whisper, and the lump is back in Rosa’s throat because he’s looking at her and his eyes are too wide again, his breath almost silent but just loud enough that she can hear its tremble. He says,

“I talked to Holt this morning.” Rosa feels herself shake her head, involuntary, the movement jerking and painful. “I talked to Holt,” Jake repeats, and it sounds like the tops of his quiet words are scratching at his throat.

Rosa inhales through her nose and tries to swallow against the growing block in her own throat, against the pressure behind her eyes.

Jake looks down at his hands, then.

“I told him it was okay.”

Rosa’s words come out strangled. “What?”

“It’s not like – like he had a choice. He wasn’t – I shouldn’t be –” The words are mumbled, quiet but _steady_ , gentle, like he’s really thought about what he’s saying. “It wasn’t his fault. He did the best he could, con – considering, I mean, I know the FBI, they’re –”

He looks up again and meets her gaze and Rosa wants to scream because just like that, her face is crumpling in on itself, the corners of her lips tugging downwards and her eyebrows creasing and she inhales sharply, her fingers digging into the newish upholstery of her too-comfortable couch.

“They suck,” says Jake quietly. And then, after a beat: “I know.”

Rosa thinks she might be nodding but she can’t be sure. She tries to get out the words _I’m sorry_ but she doesn’t hear herself articulate them and figures they must have gotten lodged behind the sob that’s escaping her lips, ejecting itself past her teeth and _God_ , she hates it, hates the way she suddenly can’t see because her eyes are blurred by tears – the way her shoulders are trembling and her throat hurts and she can’t breathe through her nose anymore because it’s all plugged up. Of all the shitty, useless, _awful_ symptoms –

Jake hugs her.

She doesn’t see him move, probably because of the stupid tears, but he _does_ , after weeks of barely-there finger brushes and aching, twisting hollow silence, he’s wrapped his arms around her shoulders and Rosa thinks that he might be the only person in the world who would hug her like this, when she’s like this, without hesitating.

She lets her fingers unwind from the couch’s upholstery and grips at the back of his jacket, hard; she can feel the wetness on her bare shoulder, where his cheek is resting. She cries onto his shoulder and hopes that this means he doesn’t hate her, lets him cry right back. They sit there for a long time.

Too long; Rosa hates feelings. But Jake always gives the best hugs, soft and warm in all the right places, and she kind of feels less like she’s drowning under a pile of crumbling bricks, so she doesn’t move. She doesn’t move her arms, or her legs, or her cheek, and neither does he – they just sit, and hold onto each other, and maybe, _maybe_ , they cry.

Just a couple of idiots crying on a couch, and Rosa thinks that she is going to _kill_ Amy Santiago when she comes back.

Well, not _literally_ kill her. At this point, Rosa has decided that death is quite frankly an illegal thing for Amy Santiago to partake in, and if Amy ever tries to die again, play-pretend or for real, Rosa’s going to have some choice fists to swing in her direction. It’s non-negotiable. Amy and death are no longer allowed in the same goddamn sentence, because Rosa’s life never needs to be this stupidly complicated ever again, and, also, Rosa isn’t completely sure that the man sitting next to her on her couch would survive this crap a second time.

(It’s a gross, cliché thought, but she remembers the disarray of the past few months and feels the bitter tang of _truth_ behind the sort-of poetic bull that her overtired brain is spouting.)

Jake pulls away, finally, his hands gripping at Rosa’s upper arms. Rosa swallows.

“You know that I’d never –”

“Finding Nemo?”

His still-trembling lips have quirked up into something that could pass for a smile (she's feeling generous, after all - has been for a while now). Rosa feels all the air that’s coiled, tight and painful inside her chest eject itself with a big _whoosh_ and take the anxiety with it.

“Oh, thank God,” she mutters, and swings her legs off the couch. “I have booze, too.”

“You’re the best, Rosa,” Jake mumbles into the couch cushions. He’s leaning back now, pressing his cheek into them tiredly. “I missed you.”

Rosa doesn't even bother to try and grimace, because she hates feelings, _yes_ , but -

She hides her smile in the kitchen cupboard.

**

And then one day Amy comes back, and the first thing Rosa does is to shove Scully aside to see her properly, not quite sure if she wants to yell or hug her. Amy makes the decision for her when she lets go of Charles and throws her arms around Rosa’s shoulders.

Rosa almost stiffens – but then, she notices; Jake walked in with her. His hair is still too-long and a total mess, his shirt still rumpled and his tie badly-knotted and his bag hanging lopsidedly off one shoulder.

(But.)

His smile is lighting up his eyes for the first time in four months.

Rosa exhales and hugs Amy back.

(“I still can’t believe you convinced them to _tell_ everyone else,” Amy says to her in an undertone, later that day. They’re in the ladies’ room, Amy perched on the counter beside the sink, both of them waiting or Gina to return from her desk with what she claims are illicit baked goods (Charles, probably) and her gossip A-game. Rosa is leaning against the wall, pretending that her eyes aren’t raking Amy of their own volition, that she isn’t cataloguing the way that Amy’s round cheeks have lost some of their dimples, the tired look in her usually-bright eyes. Her typically straight posture seems to sag a little against the bathroom mirror, and Rosa hates that she cares. “They were so clear that it wasn’t –”

“Your partner,” says Rosa, deliberately tearing her eyes away and staring at the tall door across from them, “is the world’s most bull-headed, shit-eating, brilliant asshole of a detective I have ever met.”

“Oh,” says Amy, her voice quite suddenly very small.

Rosa swallows, and turns to face Amy. Rosa's shoulders are stiff even though she doesn’t mean them to be, and maybe a little bit of the built-up anger of the past four months is curdling underneath her tone. “You need to –”

“I talked to him,” Amy says, softly, interrupting her. Amy’s eyes flick down into her lap, and Rosa can see the sudden brightness of her eyes. “I – before. Last night? He was the first person I went to, when they let me, I – I called my parents and then I –” She looks back up. “I’m sorry, Rosa.”

“Good,” says Rosa. Amy grimaces, but Rosa can't find that she cares. “He’ll be okay now,” she continues, looking down at the scuffed leather of her boots. She thinks absently that she should buy a new pair. “So will you.”

There’s a gentle touch on her arm, and Rosa looks up to see Amy almost-smiling at her, her lips trembling and her eyebrows creased. “Thank you,” she whispers, and Rosa watches a tear splash down the tanned skin of her cheek.

“I’m not good,” Rosa says, feeling her throat close up for the second time that week and _what the hell, no_ , “with – feelings. And shit.”

“I know.”

“Don’t make me go through that again, Santiago.”

“Never,” she whispers, and squeezes Rosa’s hand.) 

When Rosa walks into the briefing room later that day, Jake’s fingers are wound tightly through Amy’s, like if he lets go she’ll disappear.

Baby steps.


End file.
